Freshly signed and enspelled, copies of my new book will be flying out from the Newark post office forthwith.

If you too would like a signed copy (complete with personalized spell), you can purchase one here (use the Buy Now button).

Local folks can also pick up a copy from me in person at one of these upcoming events:

A Plague of Shadows Book Launch — Celebrate the publication of A Plague of Shadows with the Written Remains Writers Guild. Readings, Prizes (including a free copy of The Year of the Witch), Food and Drink, Music, Fun, and Dark Arts Gallery Exhibit! Newark Arts Alliance.Saturday, October 6, 2018 ~ 6 – 9 PM

Spelling Our Voices: The Power of Writing Magic and Fiction Witches — A Written Remains Get Out and Write workshop featuring Shannon Connor Winward (me!) at Hockessin Public Library.Saturday, October 27, 2018 ~ 1 – 3:30 PM

Hockessin Art & Book Fair — A celebration of local indie authors and artists at the Hockessin Community Recreation Center. Come visit “The Poets’ Corner” Shannon Connor Winward (also a featured reader), author of Undoing Winter (Finishing Line Press) and The Year of the Witch (Sycorax Press) and Lisa Lutwyche, author of A Difficult Animal (Saddle Road Press).Saturday, November 10, 2018 ~ 11 AM – 3 PM

Actually, there are more than thirteen ways to get nominated for the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry’s Association’s Rhysling Award. In fact this year there are 154 individual and unique poems up for consideration (which, if I’m not mistaken, is a record high). Here are two, which happen to be mine, which I am posting so you can read them, as they are featured today on SpecPo, the SFPA’s official blog.

“Terran Mythology” first appeared in Analog Science Fiction & Fact (October 2016). It is nominated for the 2017 Rhysling Award, Short Poem Category.

Terran Mythology

No buried forests there, no vaulted mansions
tiered roadway arpeggios
beneath the dump-yards
no fish in those oceans
no thirteen stars in the sky.

It’s all folklore
piquant escape
from the firefields, factories
the appeal
of more than fortified water rations
in these populated ovens.

(As if deserts ever
birthed rivers
sustained “agrow-cultures”.
as if life evolved from mothers
from monkeys, was ever
anything
but science spew.)

—Shannon Connor Winward

“Thirteen Ways to See a Ghost” won second place the SFPA’s 2016 Poetry Contest in the Long Poem catgory. It is nominated for the 2017 Rhysling Award, Long Poem Category.

Thirteen Ways to See a Ghost

1.As a young woman, your mother finds a dead uncle watching her sleep. The chair is no longer wedged against the door.

2.Neighbors tell her the couple who owned this house first lost a child. Your mother found him. The crayon marks in her closet could have come from her own, but she sees him, not much taller than the mattress, circumnavigating the bed, as children do, while your father and the boys are sleeping.

3.
You make a joke of it, but he bit her once, left marks, and how would you explain that?

6.
Your mother cleans the Hazard house, a squat yellow colonial leftover spitting distance from the old capitol with roots under the New Castle cobblestone. It reeks of piss and centuries. The basement stairs are narrow, dank. She prefers to leave it to the cats until one she’s never seen before climbs out and growls, Get out. After that, she makes the owner leave the Mop-n-Glo upstairs.

7.
“I’m supposed to be here,” she spits back. “You get out.”

8.You do the Garrett mansion by the Pennsylvania border, too, when it’s still a school. Your job is to flip chairs for the boys, collect bits too big for the vacuum mouth. You visit the animals, nose to their cedar-lined cages, and the human skull, and play outside on the hill alone. You don’t remember the house, just the trees and open sky, the town of Yorklyn sleepy and rustling below, but Mom says those basements go deeper than any should. There are three, one under the next, and no one is allowed to go past the first. Slaves slept down there. It’s darker than dark, and what breathes out at you is not about freedom.

9.Your grandfather slept in the basement until your mother kicked him out for whoring, and then he died. You don’t remember him, either.

10.In second grade you start a ghost club. You hold hands over the drainage grates at recess (because the dead prefer damp, dark places) and tell lost souls to move on. The other girls swear they can see them too.

11.In the basement of your parents’ house, your bags are packed. You are used to things sitting on the mattress, tugging the sheets, but that is no Casper-friendly child. That is man-sized. It is an absence of light, still there when you click on the lamp, but not after you scream. It doesn’t want you to go.

12.You worked nights at the old school below where the Garrett house burned down. A caretaker haunts it, walking the halls, rustling papers, shutting doors—but this story is not about you.

13.When they escort your parents to the room where your brother’s body lies waiting, your mother stammers, “I’ve never met anyone who died,” which, by any definition, just isn’t true.

July, 2016

Eye to the Telescope Issue #22

“Ghosts”

edited by Shannon Connor Winward

As guest editor for the Science Fiction Poetry Association’s online magazine, Eye to the Telescope, I chose a theme close to my heart (and fitting for the month of October).

For this issue I am looking for more than thumps in the attic and pretty dead girls on a moonlit road. I want the unexpected, the unmeasured—I want poems that belie the limits of life and afterlife and what we think a ghost story should be. Give me phantoms and poltergeists, yes, bean-sidhe and È Guǐ, pathos or parody, space ship specters or transmigrating alien souls—I want any and all of it, as long the poem has meat on its bones.

No restrictions on genre or form (though “speculative” is a must). Graphic violence or gore will be a hard sell. More than anything, I want to be moved.

Full guidelines here. Be sure to check out the current and back issues or visit SFPoetry.com to get a feel for what we mean by “speculative”.

As you may have heard, my first collection of poetry was selected for publication through the New Women’s Voices ChapbookCompetition from Finishing Line Press.The collection, titled UNDOING WINTER, will be released as a limited edition chapbook (short book) on June 21, 2014.

UNDOING WINTER contains some previously published poems along with others debuted especially for this collection.With subjects ranging from romantic love to motherhood, fantasy to history, death to resurrection, UNDOING WINTER represents nearly twenty years of writing, and is an exciting milestone in my creative journey.

UNDOING WINTER includes original, color cover art, “Moon Shadows”, by my long-time friend and mentor, Lisa Lutwyche.Poet, playwright, watercolorist, and actor, Lisa has published in the US and the UK, and has taught Creative Writing and Watercolor at community arts centers for over twenty years.

The press run for UNDOING WINTER will depend on the number of sales made during a special, pre-publication period that is going on NOW through APRIL 25th.If you would like a copy, please don’t wait – you can reserve a copy online at Finishing Line Press.

The cost of the book is $14.00, with a special discounted shipping cost of $2.99 for orders placed by April 25th.

Please do pass this along to anyone you think might be interested.I encourage you to place all orders by April 25th, as this will help determine the ultimate press run.

All orders will be shipped after June 21, 2014.

I want to give heartfelt thanks to my family and colleagues for your enthusiastic support, both personal and professional.This has been an amazing year.

UNDOING WINTER – coming June 2014

“Brigid’s Brambles” by Shannon Connor Winward

Also very exciting: My first poetry collection, UNDOING WINTER, has been contracted for publication by FINISHING LINE PRESS.

UNDOING WINTER is a mix of previously published poems and new work, in chapbook form. The collection deals with speculative and mythological themes as well as biographical (or semi-biographical) material.

The release date is tentatively scheduled for June 21st, 2014, with advance copies and pre-publication sales beginning in mid-March.

I will, of course, post updates as they become available. Watch this space!

Last week I promised some exciting news. As the heading suggests, I have THREE very important announcements, the first of which is:

Emerging Artist Fellowship, Honorable Mention

This year I was thrilled to learn that I have been awarded Honorable Mention for the 2014 Emerging Artist Fellowship, sponsored by the Delaware Division of the Arts. My application was in the Literature:Fiction category, and included excerpts from my novels TO THE TOUCH (currently in submissions) and COVENANT (in progress). My work was recognized from among 115 participating artists from my home state.

The Delaware Division of the Arts is an agency of the State of Delaware. Together with its advisory body, the Delaware State Arts Council, the Division administers grants and programs that support artists and arts organizations, educate the public, increase awareness of the arts, and integrate the arts into all facets of Delaware life. Funding for Division programs is provided by annual appropriations from the Delaware State Legislature, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

“Avaricious, cruel, depraved, envious, mean-spirited, vengeful—the wicked have been with us since the beginnings of humankind. You might recognize them and you might not. But make no mistake. When someone wicked crosses your path, your life will never be the same. Do you know someone wicked? You will.

The 21 stories in the Someone Wicked anthology were written by the members of the Written Remains Writers Guild and its friends, and was edited by JM Reinbold and Weldon Burge.”

Someone Wicked is an eclectic web of stories spun around the central theme of evil incarnate, with a diversity of genre and style that is the hallmark of Smart Rhino Publications (and good anthologies everywhere). The authors featured in this collection include veteran storytellers as well as virgin word-wrights for whom Someone Wicked is a first-time publication. Contributors include:

Gail Husch – Reckonings

Billie Sue Mosiman – The Flenser

Mike Dunne – The Fire of Iblis

Christine Morgan – Sven Bloodhair

Ramona DeFelice Long – The Chances

Russell Reece – Abracadabra

Carson Buckingham – The Plotnik Curse

Chantal Noordeloos – Mirror Mirror

Patrick Derrickson – The Next King

Barbara Ross – Home Improvements

JM Reinbold – Missing

Shaun Meeks – Despair

Liz DeJesus – Sisters: A Fairy Tale

Doug Blakeslee – The Flowering Princess of Dreams

Justynn Tyme – The Semi-Aquatic Blue Baker of Borneo

Ernestus Jiminy Chald – The Tail of Fate

Weldon Burge – Right-Hand Man

Joseph Badal – Ultimate Betrayal

Maria Masington – Impresario

L.L. Soares – Sometimes the Good Witch Sings to Me

and – hey, that’s me! –

Shannon Connor Winward – The Devil Inside.

Interested in learning more? Someone Wicked is being featured at The Mortuary, an online forum dedicated to the horror genre in all its forms. Creep over to the discussion to see what readers and authors are saying about the Someone Wicked stories.

By the way, the illustration for the cover for Someone Wicked (which I absolutely LOVE) was created by Jamie Mahon and designed by Amy York. Learn more about all the Someone Wicked, as well as news and updates, over at www.SmartRhino.com.